Summary :

1. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition is the pioneer of free partition software. Unlike other free partition manager, MiniTool offers more powerful free functions on disk partition management to optimize your disk usage, and protect your data.
2. Windows OS default formatting toll might not able to format a removable disk or pendrive sometimes. Such times MiniTool Partition Wizard can be used.

MiniTool Partition Wizard provides users with a function to explore partition content in advance. It supports the exploration of FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS partitions.

To install more games and applications, a large number of people want to use an external hard drive as PS extended storage. How to format as extended storage PS4? Today, MiniTool will share you with a complete guide to use PS4 extended storage.

About PS4 Extended Storage

Why so many people use extended storage on PS4? With the release of PS4 System Software 4.5, users are allowed to use an external hard drive on PS4. You can use an external storage device like external HDD and USB drive for PS4 backup and restore purposes. Also, a great many people use an external drive as PS4 extended storage where they can install more games and apps.

Do games run better on SSD? A great many people are confused about SSD or HDD for gaming performance. This post will analyze this question in details.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of PS4 extended storage? To give you a better understanding, we summarize the main advantages and disadvantages as follows.

Advantages

The following advantages attract lots of users to use an external drive as extended storage PS4:

• Get more storage space on PS4. It should be one of the biggest advantages of using PS4 extended storage. By doing so, PS4 users can enjoy many privileges that improve their game experience and flexibility in recognizing games and apps.
• Enjoy more games and apps on PS4. As you know, lots of fantastic games like Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption 2 require large storage space to install on PS4. With the increasing of game file size, an internal drive seems not enough. However, you can enjoy more games and apps on PS4 with the help of extended storage.
• Play games on another PS4. You can store your games and apps on the PS4 extended storage, and then connect it to another PS4 and play games without downloading them again. It is very handy, right?
• Avoid upgrading the internal hard drive. It is relatively complex to upgrade the internal hard drive on PS. With PS4 external hard drive, however, you don’t have to clone the old drive, neither reinstall PS4 system software and restore the backup files.

Disadvantages

Depart from these appealing advantages, there are some drawbacks of extended storage PS4 compared with other PS4 storage expansion methods.

• Can’t install the PS4 system software. Compared to the internal hard drive upgrade, you can’t install the PS4 system software on the extended storage. That is to say, you may not get an optimal system performance.
• Can’t import video and audio file. That means you won’t be able to stream movies and watch them from PS4 extended storage. If you store too many video and audio files on PS4, you need to delete some of them to free up PS4 internal hard drive.
• The external drive needs to be fully formatted. The external hard drive will be fully owned by the PS4 system. That means you will lose all the previously stored data on the drive. In addition, you can’t be able to use it on other systems like PC or Mac unless you reformat the drive.

Now, I believe that you already have an overall understanding of extended storage PS4. To use the external drive on PS4, you need to format as extended storage PS4. How to do that? Please keep reading the following context.

What You Need to Prepare

Prior to formatting external hard drive for PS4, you have to fulfill the following requirements so that the PS4 extended storage can be used properly.

• Make sure your PS4 external hard drive has USB 3.0 ports or later.
• Make sure the external storage capacity should be range from 250GB to 8TB.
• Make sure you have installed the latest PS4 system software.
• The external hard drive must be connected to the USB port of PS4 directly.

If you are ready, you can follow the instructions below to format PS4 extended storage.

How to Format as Extended Storage PS4

How to format PS4 extended storage? There are 2 simple ways for you. The first way to format as extended storage PS4 is from the Home screen. The second method is to use a free tool. Let’s begin!

Way 1. Format External Drive in PS4 Settings

Here is a full guide to format as extended storage PS4 from the Home screen:

Step 1. Plug the USB 3.0 external hard drive into the PS4 USB port. By doing so, you can connect the external drive to PS4 directly.

Step 2. Open the Home screen of PS4, and then press the Up on D-pad to enter the Function menu and select the Settings icon by pressing the X button on the console.

Step 3. In the Settings window, select the Devices option and press X button again.

Step 4. Select the USB Storage Devices option on the Devices window and then press the X button to select the external hard drive that you just connected.

Step 5. Click on Format as Extended Storage button, and click on Next in the pop-up window.

Step 6. Click on the Format button when you’re prompted with this device will be formatted as extended storage window.

Step 7. Click on the Yes button on the confirmation window. Now, PS4 will automatically start the formatting process. Once the external drive is formatted successfully, you will receive the message saying this device has been formatted as extended storage, and then click OK to finish the process

Way 2. Use MiniTool Partition Wizard

Alternatively, you can use another simple tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard to format the external hard drive with just a few clicks.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a powerful partition manager that spares no effort to resolve various problems related to a storage device like formatting hard drive. For example, you can use it to resize partition, convert FAT to NTFS with ease, wipe hard drive, and migrate OS to SSD, etc.

Click the buttons below to download MiniTool Partition Wizard and install it on your computer. Then you can follow the instruction to format the PS4 external hard drive.

Step 1. Connect this external hard drive to your computer and launch this program to get its main interface.

Step 2. Select the external hard drive from the disk map and click on the Format Partition feature from the left pane.

Step 3. Select the exFAT file system from the drop-down menu and then set up a suitable Partition label and Cluster Size based on your needs. After that, click on the OK button to save the changes.

Step 4. Click on Apply to execute this formatting process.

Now, you should format the external hard drive as PS4 extended storage. But it is just the first step to use the extended storage. Besides, you need to move games and apps to the extended storage. So, please keep reading the following part.

How to Use This PS4 Extended Storage

How to use extended storage on PS4? To run games and apps properly, you need to change the install location and move the games to the drive. Here’s a full guide for you.

Set the Application Install Location

First of all, you need to change the install location so that you can store the games and apps on the extended storage PS4. Connect the external hard drive to your PS4 system and follow the steps below:

Step 1. Navigate tothe Settings option from your PS4 Home screen.

Step 2. Scroll down to the Storage option at the Settings window.

Step 3. Then you can see the 2 locations that you can download to, select either System Storage or External Storage.

Step 4. Press the OPTIONS button, and then select Application Install Location and select Extended Storage as the target download location.

Step 5. Wait for some time. Applications will be installed to the Extended Storage once you download them.

The above steps change the target installation location. If you want to further manage the games and apps on the internal hard drive, move on to the next section.

Move Apps and Game to the PS4 Extended Storage

This part will show you how to move games and apps from the internal storage to the extended storage PS4. For that:

Step 1. In the Home screen of PS4, select the Settings icon and click on the Storage option from the list.

Step 2. Select the System Storage where the apps and games are located and click on Applications.

Step 3. In the Applications window, click on the OPTIONS button and select Move to Extended Storage option.

Step 4. Select all the games and apps that you want to move from internal storage, and then click on the Move button.

Step 5. Click on the OK button to begin this transfer. Then you need to wait for some time to complete this process.

After finishing all the above steps, you can use this extended storage smoothly when plugging it into PS4.

Useful Tips When Using External Hard Drive on PS4

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To use the external hard drive as extended storage PS4 properly, here we summarize some additional useful tips for you:

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1. Don’t remove the external drive when PS4 is turned on. To avoid any unexpected situations like data loss or corruption, it’s not recommended that you remove external drive directly when the PS4 system is switched on. You can remove the external drive PS4 after clicking the Stop Using Extended Storage option in the Quick
2. Shut down PS4 properly. If the PS4 system is shut down incorrectly, you may get a message saying ‘’your external storage drive needs to be repaired.”
3. Reformat the external drive to an appropriate file system. If you want to use this drive on a Windows or Mac system, the previous file system won’t be recognized. So, you need to reformat the drive.

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Bottom Line

Here comes the end of this post. Today, we mainly focus on how to use an external hard drive as extended storage on PS4. A full guide on formatting PS4 extended storage has been told to you. Besides, you will get some useful tips about using PS4 extended storage. Now, it’s your turn to have a try!

If you have any questions when using MiniTool Partition Wizard, you can contact us via [email protected]. Also, we appreciate any better ideas in the comment area.

PS4 Extended Storage FAQ

When your PS4 is powered on, don’t disconnect the PS4 external drive directly. Follow the steps below to remove the extended storage safely:

1. In the Settings window, navigate to Devices > USB Storage Devices.
2. Select the extended storage device and click on Stop Using Extended Storage.

Summary :

SD card formatter plays an important role in the daily life, and has been widely used in every aspect of our life. MiniTool Partition Wizard is the best SD formatter that supports various file systems. Download the freeware to have a try!

Today SD card (including mini SD and micro SD, SDHC and SDXC card for digital cameras) is widely used in many aspects of our life. For example, we use it on camera, camcorder, PDA, mobile phone, MP3 player, notebook, digital voice recorder, game console, automobile data recorder, etc. In the daily usage, we may need to format the SDHC/SDXC memory card for security function and other purpose. This guide introduces you some useful SD card formatter tools.

Why Do You Need to Format an SD Card

• To Delete Files: when you want to clean the data on the SDHC/SDXC memory card, you can format the SD card directly.
• To Change File System: in order to use the SD card on multiple personal computers and devices, you will need to use the appointed file systems. For example, to increase the internal storage space of Android, you need to format the first SD card partition with FAT32, and the second partition with EXT file system. To successfully read and write in Mac OS X, you are suggested to choose FAT file system.
• To Fix Issues: sometimes, when you try to access the SD card which has a RAW file system, Windows asks you to format it before you can use it. Similarly, if Windows reports 'The Disk Structure Is Corrupted and Unreadable', formatting is always the right solution.
• To Kill Viruses: if the SD card is infected by viruses, formatting is a good trying to remove the viruses for security purpose.

Knowing the reasons that cause you to format an SD card, the next topic is how to format SD card easily and quickly? Here in today's post, we put forward 4 solutions.

Want to know the best part? Please read on.

4 Solutions to Formatting SD Card

In this part, we list 4 solutions to help SD card formatting. You can choose any one to do the formatting. However, the first solution is strongly recommended because it breaks many limitations that you can find in the process of using Windows built-in SD card formatters.

Kind remind:

• Connect the SDHC/SDXC SD card to your computer and make sure it is recognized by Windows. If you are dealing with micro SD card, then a card reader is needed.
• Formatting SD card will lead to data loss. So please make sure you do not care the data. Otherwise, make a backup in advance.
• Formatting to FAT32 will limit single file size to 4GB.

After doing the preparatory jobs, you can try the following SD/memory formatter tools.

The Best SD Card Formatter - MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is regarded as the best SD card formatter tool, because it offers full file systems such as NTFS, FAT32, FAT, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Linux Swap to choose. Besides, its clean interfaces and straightforward wizards can lead users to go through all steps without any difficulty. What's more, useful features like create/delete/format partition, merge/split partition, move/resize partition, change file system, convert partition style, migrate system, copy disk, etc. are provided and they are totally free.

Due to these advantages, this freeware product has earned great reputation all over the world. Download this SD formatter tool to start the magic journey!

Then let's have a look at how the memory card formatter works on formatting an SD card.

Step 1. Connect the SD card (via card reader) to your computer and then launch MiniTool Partition Wizard. Select the partition on the SD card and choose 'Format Partition' from the action panel.

Step 2. Then you can see a new window comes out, where you can specify the file system, partition label, and cluster size. After doing these choices, exit and go back to the main interface.

Step 3. Click 'Apply' to finish SD card format process.

Quick Video Guide:

Built-in SD Card Formatter - Disk Management

Disk Management is the second solution we recommend, because it is easy to access (one of the useful built-in tools in Windows) and the GUI (Graphical User Interface) is also clear for you to operate. Many disk management tasks such as create volume, delete volume, shrink volume, change drive letter and path can be finished by using this tool.

Step 1. Run 'diskmgmt.msc' at CMD. Then the Disk Management utility will appear. Find the SD card you want to format and then select 'Format…' from the right-click menu.

Step 2. In the format window, customize the volume label, file system, and allocation unit size, choose whether to perform a quick format and enable folder compression, then click 'OK'.

Step 3. Disk Management sends out a warning message which reads 'Formatting this volume will erase all data on it. Back up any data you want to keep before formatting. Do you want to continue?' Now click 'OK' to format memory card/SD card, which should be finished in a minute if the quick format is selected.

What is the suitable Raspberry Pi SD card format? Yes, FAT. This post shows you how to format 64GB SD card to FAT32 easily.

Optional SD Card Formatter - Windows Explorer

You may also find that there is a 'Format…' option when you right-click the partition in Windows Explorer. Yes, this also helps you to format memory card/SD card. And all things you need to do are:

Step 1. Select 'Format…' from the GUI of the right click menu.

Step 2. Then you can choose the file system & allocation unit size, enter a volume label, select quick format and then hit 'Start' button.

Step 3. Finally, a warning message saying 'Formatting will erase ALL data on this disk. To format the disk, click OK. To quit, click “CANCEL'. Click 'OK' to confirm formatting the SD card.

This is probably caused by the RAW file system, or the drive letter is assigned to the removable disk instead of the partition. In this case, use MiniTool Partition Wizard or Disk Management to do the formatting can solve this issue quickly.

For a detailed explanation, please refer to 'How Do I Fix Windows Was Unable to Complete the Format.'

Optional SD Card Formatter - Diskpart

Diskpart is the last solution that we can resort to. Why do we place it at the end? Well, because it requires putting some commands before memory card format is finally carried out. Here is the process you need to go through if you want to format an SD card.

Step 1. Run diskpart and confirm you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC.

Step 2. In the command shell, type the following commands in order, and make sure each command is ended up with Enter key.

• list disk
• select disk n where n is the disk number that represents the SD card to be formatted
• list par
• select par n where n is the partition number of the SD partition
• format fs=ntfs quick OR format fs=fat32 quick
• exit

In this case, you should make sure that the SD card is not physically locked by the movable button at first. If the SD card is not physically locked, you should try to find the solutions to remove write-protection. We think our previous post 'How to Remove Write Protected Error' may be helpful to you.

Recover SD Card Before Formatting

In some cases, you need to format the SD card because it runs into errors, and formatting is an effective way to remove the error. But formatting will lead to data loss, so you must be wondering: is there a way to save data on the SD card before formatting. Here we would like to suggest using the data recovery feature of MiniTool Partition Wizard to do this job, which scans deep and is very easy to operate.

Data recovery of MiniTool Partition Wizard is a great data recovery tool for Windows users. No matter you want to recover lost/deleted files form Recycle Bin, formatted hard drives, or damaged hard drives, it offers the best solution to save your effort. As to how to restore data from damaged SD card, it is easy to complete.

Step 1. Connect SD card to your PC (you may need a SD card reader to help the connection).

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Step 2. Install and launch this data recovery product.

Step 3. Select the best data recovery module.

Step 4. Scan, preview and save.

To get more information, you can refer to SD Card Recovery. To format in Mac OS X, you can read here.

What File System You Should Use

In computing, a file system is used to control how data is stored and retrieved, and there are various file systems included in Windows. Usually, when formatting an SD card, Windows offers the following four file systems: NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, and FAT. Well, which one is the most suitable for you?

NTFS: NTFS (New Technology File System) is the most widely used file system. Windows uses it for system installing and hard drives are formatted with NTFS file system by default. In general, it is the best choice for you when formatting hard drives because it is more powerful and safer than FAT or FAT32. With NTFS file system, you can create partitions with 2TB storage space. And large files can be saved safely.

FAT32: FAT32 is an older file system that is most commonly used on removable drives, such as USB flash drives and SD cards. When you create an FAT32 partition using the GUI of Windows Disk Management, the largest partition size it supports is 32GB. Besides, FAT32 is not as efficient as NTFS and doesn’t support individual files larger than 4GB. If you are interested, this post 'File Is Too Large for the Destination File System' will show you everything you want to know. However, it does offer greater compatibility with other operating systems.

exFAT: exFAT is a modern replacement for FAT32. Today more and more devices and operating systems support exFAT. However, it is not as widespread as FAT32.

FAT(16): FAT16 is the original file system used in DOS and Windows 3.X, and was originally designed to be used on relatively small partitions. After revision, now it's possible to create an FAT16 partition up to 4GB in size.

Conclusion

In this post, we introduce four SD/micro SD card formatters and show you how to use them to format SD card one by one. We hope you can benefit something from this post and use one of them to help you when you need to someday. Obviously, the top recommendation here is MiniTool Partition Wizard, as it offers more file systems and breaks many limitations that you may encounter when using Windows built-in tools. Get this free SD card formatter!

Now it's your turn to have a try on the listed products above. If you have nice suggestions or any questions towards this post, please leave us comments in the comment zone, or contact us via [email protected]. We appreciate any endeavor that makes us go further.

SD Card Formatter FAQ:

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